Even aside from Faith’s and Ash’s antics, the next few weeks continued to be unsettling. The Spirit Wardens kept searching Coalridge, forcing us to hide in Crow’s Foot, while the Hive went on a citywide rampage. Djera Maha’s death had indeed splintered it into many warring factions, but all were united in their determination to hunt down her killers. Some blamed Marne Booker and her allies, others the Lampblacks, and still more the Red Sashes, with the result that the Hive declared war against every scoundrel who had ever crossed it – including one crew of assassins who specialized in poetic justice. Luckily, no one had yet connected these last culprits to the altruistic teachers at Strathmill House, although Bazso and Mylera separately alerted us that they’d thwarted several attempts to burn down the orphanage.

While we waited for the turmoil to subside, we decided that it was as good a time as any to deal with lingering injuries. I’d never recovered fully from getting drained by a ghost and then falling off the Crow’s Nest, and Ash was still seeing visions of the Sun from our attack on Professor Pritchard. Since the Lampblacks were at war again, Sawbones was spending more time in the coal warehouse infirmary, so that was where Ash and I headed.

Half a block from the orphanage, dainty slippers pattered up behind us, and Faith’s voice called, “I’ll go with you! I’m still a little shocked from one of our previous encounters.”

That must have been when she nearly electrocuted herself by jabbing a leviathan spawn in a pool with a lightning hook, but when we turned to look at her, she only pulled an exaggeratedly appalled face.

“Aren’t you always shocked?” Ash asked cheerfully, while I retorted, “Shocked – or shocking?”

“Yes,” she replied with perfect, priestess-like serenity to both of us.

At the Lampblack headquarters, we found Sawbones’ infirmary empty but for two injured thugs, which made for a nice change from the last time we were there. As usual, the good doctor was slouched against an operating table, a bottle of cheap whiskey in hand, while Danfield inventoried medical supplies and looked out of place in his spotless white coat.

As we walked through the door, Sawbones nodded to us, took a final swig, capped the bottle, and thumped it down on his table. “New injuries, or keeping up with the old ones?” he inquired.

Matching his casual tone, I replied, “Oh, just the old ones. Figured I’d come in for a check-up.”

“That is good to hear,” he said drily, waving us towards Danfield’s table (which was cleaner). “I swear, for a while there, it seemed like every week I’d patch up the three of you – and then you’d come back in with some new life-threatening problem.” Examining each of us in turn, he proclaimed Ash and me completely healed, and re-bandaged Faith’s electrical burns.

“Oh, I feel so much better,” sighed Ash, staring around the infirmary as if he were seeing it clearly instead of through a haze of Sun-spots. “Such clarity of purpose!”

To further his psychological recovery, he headed straight from the infirmary to the Orchid Salon. In the little sanctum that had been dedicated to the Golden Stag, and which he’d re-consecrated to That Which Hungers, he de-stressed by calculating the financial ramifications of each Ascendent’s death for the Church. “Everything is all coming together,” he reported to his god. “We’ll kill this Ascendent and that Ascendent, and then Dunvil himself….” And he clenched his fist to crush a token that represented the Preceptor.

That Which Hungers must have approved. Feeling much more relaxed, Ash set about researching ways to sooth the citywide anxiety, which he didn’t want to degenerate into an outright panic that would hurt the orphans. In typical Ash fashion, though, he interpreted “calming the citizenry” to mean auditing aristocratic finances (because throwing nobles in Ironhook Prison for insider trading would appease the proletariat?). After he identified the City Council families as potential scapegoats for our actions against the Church, he investigated their account books.

Unfortunately, no matter how hard he looked, he found no traces of wrongdoing: The nobles made the laws, so everything they did was legal by definition.

Meanwhile, my other crewmate met with that poor acolyte she’d dragged into the Djera Maha score. Over (mediocre) tea and scones in Charterhall, Faith hinted, “You know, it could be dangerous for you if Preceptor Dunvil finds out about your involvement….” And she launched into a series of grisly tales about how Dunvil had punished acolytes who’d gotten into similar situations in the past: namely, by killing them.

This particular acolyte toyed with her teacup, torn between fear that the Church was darker and more dangerous than she’d realized when she first donned her robes, and faith that the organization she’d pledged herself to couldn’t be so bad.

Seeing her struggle, and perhaps remembering her own, Faith switched into a wise-mentor persona and recommended, “Why don’t you figure out what happened to that priest who was in the room with us? Who was the last person to see him, and when?”

“How do you know so much?” countered the acolyte.

Making an entire production out of peering around the tearoom and checking for eavesdroppers (but apparently missing me), Faith lowered her voice and whispered, “Because I’m an acolyte too, from another city. I recently transferred from Wintercliff. Church practices here are…different. I’ve been poking around, trying to figure out why.”

(And was this a new role for Faith – or one from forty years ago that she’d decided to reprise now?)

Convinced by this cover story, the acolyte picked up a finger sandwich, frowned at the quality of bread, and took a cautious nibble.

Watching her intently, Faith pressed her advantage. “Maybe we can work together,” she suggested. “Maybe you can investigate separately, and then we can compare notes.”

At that, the acolyte fumbled her sandwich. In a terrified whisper, she reminded Faith, “But you just said that the Preceptor kills people who poke around.”

Faith had an answer ready for that too: “I know people who are experts at getting people out.” (Irimina and her smugglers crew?) “If things go wrong, they’ll exfiltrate me. Maybe they’ll exfiltrate you too,” she hinted.

The acolyte wavered, eyes wide as she tried to process everything: the sin she’d committed by skipping Mass, the brutal murder she’d subsequently witnessed, and now the sacrilege that the only person who might be able to save her life was proposing. Personally, I couldn’t understand why she didn’t simply turn to her family for help – after all, the acolytes all hailed from the aristocracy, and surely even Dunvil would hesitate to offend too many of the nobles, whose tithes constituted one of the Church’s main income sources, by murdering their children. But then again, if this acolyte were the conventional sort, she wouldn’t have let Faith convince her to skip Mass to spy on a reading room in which something “interesting” was supposed to happen in the first place.

Feigning distress, Faith commiserated, “I’m afraid we’ve learned too much. What have we brought upon ourselves?”

Leaning across the table, the acolyte whispered, “You’re sure they’ll get both of us out? If – if things get – dangerous here?”

“Yes,” said Faith firmly. “They will.”

That decided the acolyte. “Okay. I’ll – I’ll see what I can find out.”

Nodding her approval, Faith leaned back across the table towards the girl. “There’s one more thing: That person – ” she pretended that it was too dangerous even to utter Djera Maha’s name, which, given the ubiquity of Hive informants, it probably was – “you know, the one who got murdered?”

The acolyte bobbed her head. She obviously hadn’t forgotten a second of that murder, and probably wouldn’t, for the rest of her life.

Deliberately scanning the tearoom for spies again, Faith mouthed, “Her blood was electroplasmically active, like a demon’s.”

The acolyte gasped. “No!”

“It’s true,” Faith answered soberly. “You can verify for yourself. Let me teach you some tricks for sensing demonic nature.” Producing a vial of red liquid, she taught Arilyn some basic attunement right in the middle of a crowded tearoom. (I had to wonder how well its inductee’s new Whisper-y bent would sit with the Church.)

Whatever she detected about Djera Maha’s blood set the acolyte’s face into grim lines. From her determined expression, she intended to investigate what happened to the priest as soon as she returned to the Sanctorium.

But that was okay, because I was certain that every single one of Faith’s claims was true.

Now that I was fully healthy again and had figured out what both of my crewmates were up to, I returned to quelling the flames of war. In my opinion, the first question was whether removing Dunvil and his cronies would suffice to save Iruvia from invasion. That would certainly be the easiest option and kill two birds with one stone (or, rather, three Ascendent with one crew). However, as Ash had pointed out, the gears of war didn’t grind to a halt easily once they started to turn. It was Sigmund’s hint about exploiting Faith’s soft spot for me in order to extract the battle plans, plus the general attractiveness of the acolytes I’d seen at the Sanctorium, that gave me an idea about where to start investigating.

First, I applied makeup to alter the contours of my face and look Akorosian. Then I dressed like a young woman who was considering joining the Church (i.e. skimpily, albeit not quite as skimpily as Faith) and loitered in Unity Park until a group of acolytes exited the Sanctorium for a night on the town. When I approached them and inquired about acolyte life, they cheerily invited me along to see for myself.

Over drinks at a fancy Brightstone bar, Faith’s newest pet introduced herself as Arilyn Strangford. Playing leviathan-hunter-captain groupie, I gasped, “Then you must know the Admiral!”

Obviously flattered, she replied, “Oh yes, but he’s only a distant cousin.”

“That’s amazing! Do you see him at family gatherings? Does he tell stories about the Void Sea? And the Unity War? What’s he like?”

As her friends drifted off to the dance floor one by one, I kept Arilyn at our booth and plied her with cocktails while peppering her with questions about her illustrious kinsman. Most of what she told me was either public or irrelevant – but then she giggled tipsily and confided, “The Immortal Emperor still relies on his advice, you know, even if he’s retired.”

“Cheers to that!” Faking drunkenness, I clinked my glass against hers. “Of course he does!”

“My cousin is in Imperial City right now,” Arilyn announced importantly. “He’s talking to the Emperor about the Iruvian invasion.”

“Oh wow, really? Is he helping to plan it? Will he lead it?”

I flagged down a waiter and ordered refills for both of us, although I only pretended to drink my cocktail. Arilyn, however, happily seized on this opportunity for escapism, and she chattered away about Admiral Strangford and his heroic deeds on the Void Sea and in Skovlan, and the causes he championed, and the influence he held over Imperial affairs, and so on.

By the end of the night, I’d determined that assassinating the three Ascendent would end only the plot to steal the Demon Princes, because only Dunvil and his cronies cared about that. All the clamor for war, all the economic and political impetus for “bringing Iruvia to heel,” would still exist – and would continue to exist until I found a way to deflate public sentiment.

It looked like I would need to go play muse for Ian Templeton after all.